6 tips to attract customers to stores despite corona

Since the beginning of this year, Corona has been an enormous burden on the economy in Germany. Now, in November, another lock down followed and is once again forcing many companies to close. This time, brick-and-mortar retail is not affected. And yet businesses in cities are currently in a difficult situation. As a result of the current corona restrictions, inner cities are currently mostly empty. There is a lack of walk-in customers. Because when all other industries are closed, the trip to the city is not worthwhile for many. They then often prefer convenient online shopping. This is bad for retailers. Because online customers usually generate less revenue. So as a retail entrepreneur, you must somehow be able to attract your customers back into business. To do this, we have collected 6 tips for you on what you can use in your marketing strategy to strengthen customer loyalty and attract local customers.

1. Outstanding service

The biggest advantage customers get when they buy products in-store rather than online is service. So this is your main argument for getting customers into your store. Of course, this must also be correspondingly excellent. Employees are the most important element of good service. They should be trained regularly so that they are always up to date with the latest products on offer. This is the only way you can advise your customers as they expect. Depending on the product range, advice is also more or less important to customers. Through self-conducted surveys or industry-specific research on this topic, you can find out how much advice and service your customers expect and therefore optimally plan your employee capacities. A business should not be overstaffed, as this is both uneconomical and can be perceived as oppressive by customers. However, understaffing is also bad because then not enough service can be provided.

The current corona situation poses yet another challenge. In many places, the maximum number of people who can stay in the shop has been limited. If your shop is full, it is too annoying for many customers to wait and they will keep going. To make waiting time more pleasant for your customers, you could hand out small items such as hot drinks or cookies. This lifts the mood of customers and makes them accept a waiting period. Customers appreciate small gifts like this and make them want to come to your store rather than order online from a wholesaler.

2. Christmas shopping

Another point that many customers appreciate when it comes to stationary stores compared to online shopping is the atmosphere. You can make very good use of this, especially in the current pre-Christmas period, to attract customers to your shop. For many people, Christmas time includes strolling through the beautifully decorated streets and shops in search of Christmas gifts. They appreciate the atmosphere and prefer this to shopping from home. With an attractive, Christmas decoration, you can therefore very well bring customers to visit you.

Especially since most Christmas markets and other events are cancelled due to corona, people are longing for a Christmas atmosphere. And this is how a Christmas stroll can be an experience where nothing else is possible. A cosy, Christmassy atmosphere also has a positive effect on your customers' buying decisions and promotes sales. As another Christmas service that makes you stand out from online shops, you could also offer to wrap the goods directly in gift paper when you buy. This small gesture makes a lot of people happy, as it saves them the hassle of wrapping each gift themselves.

3rd Black Friday

Black Friday is on November 27. Especially in online retail, this day is probably the most profitable day in the run-up to Christmas. With huge discounts, companies attract customers to buy their products. But as a stationary retailer, you too can use this day for yourself and also advertise with discount campaigns. The advantage you have in stationary stores is spontaneous purchases. While customers usually search for specific products online, they often get carried away by exhibitors and discounts in stores. With a clever placement of your offers and bestselling products, you can very well persuade customers to buy something that they have not planned.

However, you should not indiscriminately reduce your products, but you should consider a precise strategy. Depending on the type of products and the sales model, different strategies can be useful. One approach would be to advertise that the entire product range has been reduced by a certain percentage. Or you can specifically search for individual bestselling products from your range and reduce them significantly. However, these should then also be advertised and placed accordingly in your shop. When planning, however, you shouldn't look at Black Friday separately from your Christmas strategy. Instead, you should integrate the discount campaigns into your Christmas business and use this day as a prelude, for example, which announces all your Christmas bargains.

Many large companies are also already showing how this extraordinary business can be extended even further. Campaigns such as Cyber Monday extend the exceptional business. You too can use this strategy and turn Black Friday into a Black Week, for example. This way, you and your customers will benefit for longer. Then you may also be able to reach customers who didn't have time to go shopping on that one day.

4th newsletter

Once you have considered a concept for which promotions and offers you will be offering your customers in the near future, you must of course also inform them about it. Because even the best concept is useless if no one knows about it. One way to reach your customers and strengthen customer loyalty is a classic email newsletter. The prerequisite for this is, of course, that you already contact details your customers were able to collect. A very easy way to do this is WiFi marketing package from Socialwave. Here, customers receive free WiFi in your shop and log in with their contact details in return. On the one hand, you improve the buying experience for customers if you can surf the Internet while waiting and at the same time have the opportunity to collect contact details.

As with everything, a newsletter starts with planning. Think about a precise strategy for when you want to send emails. Regular messages strengthen customer loyalty because they stay in their memory. But too many messages can quickly have an opposite effect. Too many and too penetrating emails are perceived as spam and no longer as informative communication. If you want to promote several campaigns within a short period of time, you can also summarize them and point them out in an email.

There are many options when designing content. However, the content should always be varied and informative or beneficial to the customer. If a customer knows that they will always be informed about current offers and promotions in your newsletter, this increases the likelihood that they will be opened.

After you have planned, created and sent a newsletter, there is the last step: evaluation. This is also important in order to learn and optimize future campaigns. For the entire newsletter creation process, see Sendinblue, a tool for newsletters, very helpful tips.

5. Use social media

Social media gives you the opportunity to reach your customers when they are at home. The Corona crisis has shown that it is important for every type of company to be present on social media. Because this is the best way to reach out to younger customers in particular. If you don't have a company profile yet, now is the ideal time to start. Tips on how to set up your profile and what you should pay attention to can be found in our blog post on top of that.

As a retailer, you can draw attention to yourself on your profile and tell your customers that you're open despite the restrictions and that they can enjoy shopping with you. If you post regularly on your channel, you quickly gain more reach and can thus not only reach existing customers, but also gain new customers.

For regular posts, you should first consider a strategy for what you want to post and when. This makes it easier to produce new content. Ideas for interesting content include presenting your products either in pictures or small videos. You can also post pictures of your sales room if it has been decorated to suit the season. Many users are also interested in taking a look behind the scenes. Stories on Instagram, for example, are very suitable for this. If you want to convince your customers that shopping with you is safe even now, you can also present your hygiene concept in a story. Of course, you can also very well draw attention to discount promotions on your profile. There are countless opportunities on social media to present your business in an appealing way and attract customers. With any type of mail, point out that you are happy to have every customer in your store.

The use of hashtags also increases reach. Especially in the corona situation, a lot of solidarity has been shown to local companies under the hashtag “supportyourlocals”. People want to actively help support local businesses and make sure to buy locally and locally. Use this to your advantage to bring customers to your store.

6. “Get Goodie” actions

Another very successful means of customer loyalty is small gifts or gifts. These are not a big financial expense for you, as they can be deducted as advertising costs. Or you can use small remnants. Nevertheless, they are a very effective way of increasing customer satisfaction after shopping and getting them to come back again. This is another opportunity to stand out from impersonal online retail and attract customers to your business. Draw attention to such actions even outside the doors of your shop. In this way, you may attract one or the other additional customer to your shop. You can also link the goodie to a return. For example, you can give customers a voucher at the checkout for their next purchase from you. In this way, you increase the chance that the customer will come back.

You can also connect the whole thing with your online marketing. On the one hand, you can draw attention to such activities on your social media profiles and in newsletters. But you can also give out a goodie directly to your followers. For example, you can post the goodie to your story, and anyone who shows a screenshot of that story while shopping in your store gets the gift. This is how you achieve two important things: You attract customers or followers directly to your shop online and you generate more followers on social media when word gets around about the campaign.

conclusion

Even though the current situation certainly poses major challenges for many retailers, you can still attract customers to your store with a few tricks and actions. And then nothing stands in the way of the most profitable time of the year, before Christmas, despite corona.

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